World Wrestling Entertainment

The birth of the WWWF: As NWA champion, Buddy Rogers' bookings were controlled by Toots Mondt, promoter in the Northeast. The other NWA promoters were dissatisfied because Mondt rarely let Rogers defend the belt outside the Northeast. Mondt and Vince McMahon Sr. wanted to keep Rogers and the NWA title, but Rogers didn't want to lose his $25,000 deposit on the belt. So Rogers lost the NWA title to Lou Thesz in Toronto on January 24, 1963. Rogers was not recognized as the first WWWF champion right after losing to Thesz. Instead, Rogers was awarded the WWWF title in mid-April 1963, with the explanation that he has won a (fictitious) tournament in Rio de Janeiro. He lost the title to Bruno Sammartino a month later on May 17, 1963. Rogers would have likely had a longer reign as champion, but, he suffered a heart attack shortly before the match with Bruno. This explains both the brevity of the match (47 seconds) with Bruno and the subsequent disappearance of Rogers from the ring. Rogers retired after this match, although he did return to the ring in 1967.

From 1971-1983, the WWF joined the NWA as a regional promotion and the WWF World title was dropped in status to the WWF title, a regional title. By 1983, Vince McMahon Jr. had taken over control of the promotion and wanted out from the shadow of the NWA, so he changed the name of his title to the "WWF Championship" and established the WWF as an autonomous organization with World title status.

Today, the WWF's only real "competition" is World Championship Wrestling, but aside from a two-year span (1996-1998) during which time WCW was winning the ratings war, the WWF has remained virtually unchallenged since the mid-1980s.

Some information gleaned from http://www.rantsylvania.com/home/rspwfaq/part2/wwf.asp

The change was forced by WWFE's defeat in a London court of a lawsuit brought by the World Wide Fund For Nature (known until 1990 as the World Wildlife Fund in Europe and still known by that name in the USA). According to the ruling, WWFE was guilty of violating an agreement reached between the two organisations whereby both would continue to use the acronym WWF, but in which the wrestling organisation would not attempt to use the WWF name in any expansion or diversification outside wrestling. In particular, the success of the WWF.Cominternet site (itself one of the top 20 most visited sites on the entire Internet) was named as a major factor in the Fund's decision to serve the suit.

The change from WWF(E) to WWE was backed up by a campaign both on the Federation's TV shows and the internet which used as its slogan 'WWE: Get The F Out'.

This change in corporate identity was the fourth since Vince McMahon bought the company from his father over two decades ago. Bringing the WWWF under the banner of his own Titan Sports company and renaming it the WWF was the first. In 1999 Titan Sports was renamed World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc, and in April 2002 the WWF was 'split' into two distinct brands - WWF Raw and WWF Smackdown. This 'brand extension' was regarded by most as a failure, mainly due to the failure to properly split the company and poor storyline writing featuring wrestlers 'crossing over' between shows, thus muddying the public's perception of the two brands as seperate entities.

Interestingly, the new logo which replaces the famous 'scratch' logo, the symbol of WWF Attitude is nothing more than a poor Photoshop retouch. Simply removing the two cross strokes of the 'F' to leave two 'W's piggy-backing on top of each other does not a new logo make. However, as I'm sure Vince would tell you, WWE is now the only game in town - so WW just about sums it up...